In the C++ Seasoning video by Sean Parent https://youtu.be/W2tWOdzgXHA at 33:41 when starting to talk about “no raw synchronization primitives”, he brings an example to show that with raw synchronization primitives we will get it wrong. The example is a bad copy on write class:
template <typename T>class bad_cow { struct object_t { explicit object_t(const T& x) : data_m(x) { ++count_m; } atomic<int> count_m; T data_m; }; object_t* object_m;public: explicit bad_cow(const T& x) : object_m(new object_t(x)) { } ~bad_cow() { if (0 == --object_m->count_m) delete object_m; } bad_cow(const bad_cow& x) : object_m(x.object_m) { ++object_m->count_m; } bad_cow& operator=(const T& x) { if (object_m->count_m == 1) { // label #2 object_m->data_m = x; } else { object_t* tmp = new object_t(x); --object_m->count_m; // bug #1 // this solves bug #1: // if (0 == --object_m->count_m) delete object_m; object_m = tmp; } return *this; }};He then asks the audience to find the bug, which is the bug #1 as he confirms.
But a more obvious bug I guess, is when some thread is about to proceed to execute a line of code that I have denoted with label #2, while all of a sudden, some other thread just destroys the object and the destructor is called, which deletes object_m. So, the first thread will encounter a deleted memory location.
Am I right? I don’t seem so!
